Tennessee 2018 Garden

[applestar]

I love the kitty photos! But... Are they still kittens or are your sweet potato leaves HUGE!?

[Gary350]

I love the kitty photos! But... Are they still kittens or are your sweet potato leaves HUGE!?

The 5 white kittens are as large as mother cat but not yet as large as father cat he lives across the street. I think these 5 cats will get as large as father cat because we kept a gray color baby from a litter 1 years ago she is as large as father cat.

That is an interesting question about sweet potatoes leaf size. I have never thought about them being huge I figure that is the size they should be, I never saw anyone else sweet potato plants. I took measurements & photos, this leaf is about 8.5" wide, other photo shows the patch of leaves 18" deep. Cats can walk through the jungle of leaves and not be seen. Cats have all disappeared at the moment they are sleeping under the sweet potato leaves in the shade, LOL. Is that not normal for sweet potatoes leaves to be this size? I have not fertilized the plants and I don't water them. Sweet potatoes are crazy plants just like Okra when it gets blistering hot 100 degree, full sun all day, no rain for a month, soil dry as desert, sweet potatoes grow several times faster and larger.

[Gary350]

Tomatoes are piling up so we decided to make more tomato sauce. I think this is enough for 2 pints of tomato sauce.

Has anyone notices days are 1 hours shorter. Today was 2 hours shorter only because the sky has been very over cast and very dark all day.

[Gary350]

We only got 1 full jar of tomato sauce on this batch. The other jar is about 80% full. Today's tomato harvest is slightly more than enough for dinner. Weather has changed and tomato plants are loading up with green tomatoes. It was mostly over cast all day but it was still 90 degrees. Lower sun light & shorter days must be slowing down tomatoes from getting ripe fast. The last photo is 1 tomato plant, a cherry tomato plant I planted from seed, it is 6 1/2 ft tall and making about 3 ripe tomatoes every day.

[Gary350]

I have 3 Mexican potato plants with a potato. Potatoes were above the soil green as leaves so I shoveled soil on them they will turn brown in a few weeks with on sunlight. Out of 25 plants these 3 are the only plants that made potatoes and not seeds, they were planted too late weather was already 90 degrees. These are cold weather plants I am going to plant some Sept 1 to see how they do. 1 plant looks good the other 2 are bug eaten.

I have 7 volunteer okra plants the tallest plant made some large okra that I am letting make seed for next year. All the rest of the okra we intend to eat.

Flat pot beans are doing good rain is what the plants needed. Runner still have not learned hot to climb poles.

Blue Lake bush beans have slowed down we only get enough beans once a week for the 2 of use to eat. Freezer is full of several zip lock bags of beans.

I have a package of dry Lima beans in the pantry, I planted a few seeds where the volunteer okra is growing. These Lima beans are pole beans they are climbing all over the okra. I started to remove the beans but changed my mind, let them grow.

[Gary350]

I have 25 sugar beets planted they don't appear to be making beets or seeds either. This is a cold weather crop maybe they will do something soon as weather gets colder. Sugar beets are white and taste like sugar when I lived in Arizona the desert was planted with sugar beets in winter. There was a sugar beet field about 2 miles square near Popeye Chicken where I ate about once a week. I think I have 25 more seeds so if these don't do right I will plant more in Sept and see what happens. EIEIO. LOL

The processing factory ground sugar beets in a large industrial food processor. Beets were chopped into small pieces with water then water was pumped to a 1 acres cement pond outside. Sugar water was sprayed into the sky where it evaporated in low humidity AZ air. When water was thick like syrup it was allowed to air dry then tractors with loader blades pushed the sugar onto conveyors, that took the sugar into the factory where it was packaged & sold.

[Gary350]

I planted a lot of Marigold flowers this year all over the garden. I planted a lot of other flowers too but garden plants out grew the short flowers and too much shade & hot dry weather killed most of the flowers. Some people claim marigolds keep bugs away, I can not say that is true I don't have many bugs anyway, last year I had leave jumper aphids on tomatoes.

I found more zipper spiders in the garden today. Wow this is freaking me out I have not seen zipper spiders in 10 years now all of a sudden I see more and more spiders every day. Spiders can stay they eat bugs.

[Gary350]

Some of the pepper plants have grown 5 ft tall and some are still 1 ft tall. Some have peppers and some have nothing. I have a pepper that looks like a chili pepper but it is sweet like a bell pepper I am hoping it will make peppers.. So far sweet bell peppers have made no peppers.

[applestar]

Is it possible your sticks are just a little bit too fat? Maybe try tying stings to top of the teepee and hanging down — I Usually tie to sticks and peg the strings down.

[Gary350]

Is it possible your sticks are just a little bit too fat? Maybe try tying stings to top of the teepee and hanging down — I Usually tie to sticks and peg the strings down.

My poles are ruff saw cut wood 7/8" x 7/8" square. Bean vine wrap them self around & around the poles but a big wind blows the vines off. But most vines are growing straight up not trying to get them self on the poles. I learned from biology class if you tough a vine on one side the vine will move in the direction of the touch looking for something to climb. Like dodder vine does. I have touched the vines many times and got them to move to the poles then they some times climb and sometimes not. Most of the time I find 4 or 5 vines twisted around each other like a rope laying on the ground. I tried running the poles through my saw to make the surface rougher but that did not work. I tried hay bail twine that does not work. I stuck some tree limb sticks in the ground that did not work either. Maybe the word BUSH BEANS on the package means, pole beans that will not climb. LOL.

[Gary350]

It rained all night. It was still raining when I woke up this morning. I looked out the bedroom window the garden looked like a pond. I was not sure I was seeing what I though I was seeing so I went an looked out the back door. Sure enough it looks like water with plants coming out of the water. LOL. Wow it must have rained a lot last night. After we finished breakfast rain stopped so we went to Walmart then went to the flea market. We had lunch at the BBQ restaurant then went home. Dinner time I went to the garden picked a few tomatoes, few beans, and 1 okra. One okra is not much but better than nothing, it made 10 slices. Dinner was, fried okra, stir fry green beans, fried squash, sliced tomatoes, corn on cob, potato salad, all from the garden and chicken.

[Gary350]

Soil is soft from all the rain & pepper plants not in cages have fallen over. I put wooden stakes at each pepper plant then I shoveled soil around each plant until it was 1 ft tall pile of soil on each plant. This might help hold up the plants, it might also help hold moisture for each plant.

I built these wooden shelves a few months ago to hold herbs up above the corn so they get sunlight. Maybe next year I can use these shelves to grow melons. I grew melons on a shelf once 35 years ago it works good to keep melons out of the mud during the rainy season.

I have 4 wild black cherry trees in these 4 pots. They keep growing taller they have grown 2 & 3 more new leaves each since last time I looked at them. They need to be re-potted very soon then planted in the yard about November.

I have 2 large pots of onions that I have not decided yet what to do with. Egyptian walking onions on the right, onions on left were damaged about 1/2 the bulb got cut off but still had roots so I planted them to see if they will live and they did. I'm not sure if these will live through winter and grow again next year. I guess I better pull them up to eat.

I use to set melons on cement blocks it kept they dry even in rainy weather so they did not rot.

[Gary350]

Roma Flat Pod beans are growing pods already. If these grow as fast as other beans there will be beans to harvest in another week. The package said, 65 day crop, it seems like only a month ago that I planted these. Lots of blossoms & lots of beans.

[Gary350]

About first week or so of July Rhubarb plants were damaged by a storm. Most of the stalks were broken off and died. The plant nearest the garage had the least damage. 3 of the 5 plants have grown back. I'm not sure if the other 2 plants will come up next spring.

We have a bigger than usually harvest of tomatoes today. All those green tomatoes are fixin to get ripe.

Dinner was, pinto beans over a slice of bread, garden fried potatoes, sliced tomatoes, ham fried on the grill. I had seconds on the beans, potatoes & tomatoes. The garden only gets used a few months every summer then it sets there doing nothing all winter. It would be nice to grow a garden year round. All the food we have in the pantry & freezer it is almost like having a garden year round.

I count 29 small okra pods on the okra plants these should be ready to eat in about 5 days. If all 29 pods get sliced & cooked the same day this will be a lot of fried okra.

[Gary350]

Yesterday Flat Pod beans were slightly larger than a tooth pick, today many of them are 4" long. I never grew these beans before I have no clue how large they get or when they should be picked. I guess I play it by ear just watch and see what happens. The plants are loaded with 100s of beans. None of the vines are longer than 24" so they are not pole beans. All the runners were freaking me out making me thing the Bush Bean package was marked wrong. These beans were planted about 1 month ago this is a very fast crop.

[Gary350]

We have 2 more pint jars of tomato sauce for the pantry. I decided I better check the tomatoes before the big storm tonight. Maybe we get lucky like before and the storm goes around us or it fizzles out before it gets here. Everything that is ripe has been picked. Still lots of tomatoes on the plants. Some of the plants are 7 ft tall. There is probably 40 lbs of tomatoes on the plants.

[Gary350]

I hope the pepper plants don't blow over tonight. Some are in cages with stakes and some have only stakes. I piled soil up around the bottom of each plants I hope this holds in moisture and makes plants grow better maybe peppers will get larger & maybe more peppers too. This soil around the plants might help a little to keep them from blowing over tonight. Plants are loaded with peppers I'm not sure if that is because of all the rain we had or because cooler temperatures are in the 60s at night. Weather woman claims 70 mph wind tonight & 61 degrees Wed morning.

[Gary350]

No storm last night, no wind, no rain either. Storm went north into KY. Flat pod beans don't appear to have grown any last night. Several tomatoes that were orange yesterday are red today. No rain in the forecast for a week.

[Gary350]

There were a lot of tomatoes to pick today, I knew all those green tomatoes would start getting ripe soon. Cool weather & over cast sky is what tomatoes needed.

I harvested a lot of peppers for my son. Hard to believe anyone eats these. The long curly peppers are so hot I think 1 pepper would be too much for a 10 gallon pot of, chili, stew, soup or what ever you want to use it for. They make good paint stripper.

I have 1 squash & 1 okra. It would be nice to have more than 1 okra each time. Maybe another week there will be more than 1 okra.

Dinner sure was good tonight, garden fried potatoes & onions, fried okra, pinto beans, fried squash, tomatoes, BBQ pork chop on the grill.

[applestar]

I’m not much for the really hot peppers either. The way I like to use them is to use a small amount combined with flavorful sweet peppers — it turns out that just like tomatoes, supermarket peppers have little to no flavor. I’m in pursuit of fragrant and flavorful sweet pepper varieties now.

I like to chop up peppers and freeze them in labeled “hot” and “sweet” freezerbags. This way, I can just take the amount I want out. I make up Red only bags of hots and sweets in case I want to make red hot sauce, but also combine colors — red, orange, green, yellow. I’m getting good Browns from Chocolate Cake sweet bell peppers and Sweet Chocoloco mild hot peppers, and I can cut up some of the immature purple-black, purple, and lavender purple from the various hot peppers.

I also learned to de-seed and dehydrate a bunch and then grind up and blend my own Paprika powder. The hot pepper seeds I’m not saving, stem ends and placenta are dried and saved, then used for making garden powders and sprays for pest deterrent.

Another way to use the hot peppers is to keep them whole and dunk and retrieve — either tie a kitchen twine to the stem and fish it out of the soup/stew or use a slotted spoon... or chopsticks. Leave in as long or short as you need, to your taste. If you want to release just a little bit more heat, poke a holes in the whole pepper with bamboo skewer, toothpick, or corncob holder.

[Gary350]

Applestar, I love hot spicy food, I use to eat it fire hot but my stomach can not take it anymore, wife can not eat hot spicy food either. I like a tiny pinch of ground red pepper in food just enough to give it a very mild spicy flavor.

About 15 years ago I had lots of bell peppers & Mexican chili peppers. I sliced the peppers in long thin strips, removed seeds and vanes then dehydrated them in the food dehydrator. I learned if the pepper pieces get too hot and dry out too fast they loose all their flavor and they are not longer very spicy hot. What worked best for me was dehydrate peppers on the screened in back porch to keep out bugs and birds they dried slow about 2 weeks. Chili peppers were mild hot I chopped them into powder in the kitchen blender they made very good chili powder. I chopped the sweet bell peppers it made good Paprika powder. I also have medium Mexican chili's that make good medium hot chili powder. I kept all the chili powders in quart size mason jars. I also had jalapeno peppers that were good to slice thin and cook on pizza, and in soup & stew. I ground up all the green jalapeno peppers in the kitchen blender with out dehydrating them it looked like a green milk shake, I fill mason jars with jalapeno pepper puree. A month later I noticed jalapeno peppers ate the metal lids off of the mason jars what use to be metal looked like charcoal mud on top of the green pepper puree. I had 1 jar with a plastic lid that I was able to save. I poured a jar of jalapeno sauce on the old lawn mower it removed all the, paint, rust & oil then I sprayed it clean with water it looked like brand new after I painted it.

I use to save juice from Bread & Butter pickles, fill the empty pickle jars with garden vegetables, onions, carrots, broccoli, green beans, 1 hot pepper, etc, pour hot boiling pickle juice into the jars until full, put on the lid then set it in the pantry for 1 month. After a month they were ready to eat.

We have learned that Dollar Tree store has dry herbs $1 per bottle in very large bottles about 1 cup size bottles. We bought 4 bottles of Paprika, 2 bottles of Italian seasoning, and several others. This is much better than paying $7 for those small bottles at the grocery store.

Wife likes the sweet bell peppers sliced and dices very small then frozen in 1 pint zip lock bags. This is what she cooks with all winter.

I still want hot spicy food sometimes, before & after I eat it I have to drink some baking soda water to neutralized the acid. Wife said, chew the hot spicy food then spit it out it won't hurt your stomach. LOL that defeated the purpose for eating.

[Gary350]

This is the first time I have grown Carmen peppers. The Red color part has a milder flavor than the green color part. It tastes like a sweet bell pepper with a milder bell pepper flavor. I removed seeds & vanes, sliced & dices it then put it in a zip lock bag to put in the freezer. These will be good for winter cooking. Wife said, tomorrow I will cook something with that pepper we will see how it tastes in food.

Today's tomato harvest is a bit smaller than yesterday.

Here is an okra pod that may be 1 day over due for cooking. Some how I over looked it yesterday.

[Gary350]

These peppers are called Big Chilies. 3 peppers were too heavy for the limb so it broke off. I brought the limb into the house and tasted the chilies. They have no flavor, they taste like grass. I think they harvested them self too soon. Maybe if they stay in the kitchen for a week or so they get riper and flavor will change but I'm not sure peppers do that? When I see ripe Red peppers on these 4 plants I will find out what they taste like.

[applestar]

Not sure if they are too green/immature, but they need to stay out on the counter to ripen not refrigerated (which is the normal way you would keep green peppers), but they need moisture or they dry out. It helps to have long stems (it might have been better if you had left them on the broken limb) — wrap just the stems with moistened paper towels while keeping the rest of the fruit dry but mist several times a day to forestall dehydration.

Thicker walled peppers that are partly green will turn completely red (or other full ripe color) without shriveling up when treated this way.

(I just thought of it, but it might work to put cut stem flower vials filled with clean water on the stems... it might help even more to add a touch of sugar, but you’ll need to change water every day)

[Gary350]

My yard long bean seeds arrived today smashed by post office equipment. I have 18 good beans I will plant them all tomorrow and hope for the best first frost is usually about Nov 1st.

60 degrees this morning and yesterday too, warming up to 86 today and 91 tomorrow. I hope beans like this weather, it is going to get colder. Maybe I should plant a few beans in a 2 gallon pot so I can bring them in the house at night?

[Gary350]

Today I bought yard long beans & purple hull peas at farmers market. Soon I will know what they taste like and if I want to grow these next year.

[Gary350]

More tomatoes.

[Gary350]

I planted 18 yard long bean seeds and about 50 purple hull bean seeds, I have about 65 day to first frost. I have a dozen old house windows maybe I can build a TP type green house to keep plants alive 2 more week I be lucky and get a small harvest.

Dinner tonight is, crock pot garden Chicken vegetable beans soup. Wife started this about 7 am. 2 chicken breast, 1 can cream of chicken soup, 1 can cream of celery soup, 1 dry package of french onion soup, water, salt, pepper. Vegetables from the garden, garlic, onion, corn, potatoes, peas, green beans, carrots. Vegetable from farmers market, purple hull peas. Serves with garlic bread & a little wine.

I picked grapes today. They have a very good flavor & sweet. I think I will use a few of them to make 1 gallon of wine. I have about 2 gallons of grapes.

More tomato sauce for the pantry. We have a very good stock pile of food for winter.

[Gary350]

We have 2 more jars of very thick tomato sauce we cooked 1/2 gallons of tomatoes down to 2 pints. It has a very rich tomato flavor. We added no herbs to this, no garlic, no onion either.

[SQWIB]

Everything Looks Great.

[Gary350]

We are canning 7 pints of tomatoes today. I have a smaller 7 pint canner but I will only hold 7 of the old 1960s type jars. New jars are shaped different with fancy designs on the glass, 7 new jars will not fit into the old canner. This glass top stove sucks it barely gets hot enough to boil water last time we did this it took 2 hours for water to boil in this big canner. I have a tall crock pot that will hold 2 jars I want to try it next time to can 2 jars.

[Gary350]

Purple hull peas turned out to be very good in soup & stew. They look a lot like black eye peas but do not taste like black eye peas. Wife made a small crock pot of beans with a small ham bone, small piece of ham, onion, black pepper, salt, it turned out very good. We have 6 different size crock pots each size is handy for cooking something.

[Gary350]

We love these 1" cherry tomatoes I am going to plant 8 of these plants next spring. I lost the tag don't know what the name is. I picked 9 tomatoes from this single plant today. They have a very good flavor.

[Gary350]

I forgot to take pics of 5 squash we had, we ate 2 of them last night, still have 3 squash left.

[Gary350]

Flat pod beans were 4" long a week ago but I did not pick them because I have never grown these beans before an have no clue how long they get. Today I picked enough beans from the first row to make Oriental stir fry. Some of the beans are 5" long. I did french cut for stir fry.

Stir fry was very good, flat pod beans are very good too with, chicken, beans, carrots, bell pepper, onions, garlic, celery, sweet & sour sauce and rice. Everything is from the garden except, rice, sauce, celery, & chicken.

Flat Pod Beans vs Stir Fry Peas. Beans are much softer than peas before cooking, after cooking peas are not quite as soft as beans. Peas are a little bit tougher to chew & some times peas are stringy. After cooking flavor is about the same.

Flat pod beans were planted 40 days ago I am surprised plants made beans already.

Wow plants have a lot of beans I'm going to pick beans for pint jars or freezer tomorrow.

It turns out even thought flat pod beans try to climb like pole beans they are not climbers, vines never get longer than 24" and vines are not able to hang on to poles without falling off.

[Gary350]

I have seen a lot of magnificent spiders in the past week they are every where. If I go outside after dark a flashlight makes them easy to see. I try not to knock them down I walk around them if I can. Spiders manage to get a long web between the house & tree, house & garage, tree & car, tree & garden. I walked out to the garden a spider fell from the tree and landed on me. I don't like these ugly spiders but they catch bugs. The name magnificent spider comes from the way they catch bugs by swinging a single web around and around like a fan with 1 blade until it snags a bug.

[Gary350]

I picked more flat pod beans today after slicing them I have 2 quart jars full. Wife put beans in pint size zip lock bag then put 4 bags in the freezer. Freezer is full we ate some corn so that made room for beans.

Tomato harvest was good today. I found 2 green tomatoes laying on the ground they will get ripe setting in the kitchen. Pantry has enough tomatoes so we need to concentrate on eating all the tomatoes we can so none go to waste.

I found 1 tomato plant with no leaves on the very top 12" after closer inspection I found a horn worm. Now its a dead horn worm.

2 more okra pods. Okra is slow about 1 or 2 pods every that works about good we get to have fried okra about once a week.

Summer is almost gone don't forget what it looks & feels like this winter.

[Gary350]

We had another good tomato harvest today.

Clouds were looking nice today so I took my camera with we at lunch time. I got a few pictures while parked at the red traffic lights.

I picked 4 okra today & we fried them for dinner. We had 2 yellow squash cooked with onion. Potato salad, corn on the cob, tomatoes & BBQ turkey sausage cooked on the grill.

[Gary350]

Today I dug up the volunteer potatoes. This was pealing from 3 potatoes sprinkled on the soil in a small spot then covered with more soil. Potato plants came up then cantaloupe vines took over the potatoes. Good thing potato plants are taller than melon plants. Today plants were dead so I dug them up. All these potatoes came from 1 shovel full of soil. Is it possible the potato peals had 20 eyes that produced 20 potatoes. Compared to the quantity of potatoes I got from these volunteers they did much better than the 90 potato plants I worked so hard on an only got 28 lbs of potatoes total. This is about 1.5 lbs of potatoes.

[Gary350]

Scarlet Runner Beans are making plenty of nice flowers but no beans. No honey bees either.